Apple PowerBook G3 Firewire (Pismo)

Introduction

This page is a reference to guide you in using Linux on a PowerBook G3 Firewire (aka Pismo). While there may be some manual steps required to get things set up, the Pismo has fairly good support for Linux when all is said and done.

Notes

Initially, Xorg.conf is not configured correctly, and when X starts, the screen is a mess of colors and lines. Editing this file manually will give you a functional desktop.

DVD playback is very poor under Linux. I suspect that this is either an issue with the video drivers or configuration. Perhaps it can be cured with further tweaking. For reference, playback was fine under OS X.

While sound works out of the box, the main volume control does not. It must be changed to be acting upon the “PC Speaker”, rather than “Master”.

Suspend and Hibernate did not initially work. Installing the “pmud” package got Suspend working - most of the time, anyway.

Summary

The Linux experience on the Pismo is good. Setup issues aside, Linux is a reasonably functional OS on this classic Powerbook.